IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. McAleer) review
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (C. Lemire) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review
Ready Player One [2018] (directed by Steven Spielberg, screenplay by Zak Penn and Ernest Cline based on the novel [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] by Ernest Cline [wikip] [GR] [WCat] [Amzn] [IMDb]) is a visually spectacular movie of our time that IMHO definitely deserves though probably will not receive Oscar consideration beyond the most obvious categories (cinematography, set design, film editing, etc).
Set in 2045, in a world of quite radical decline as the film's late-teen / early-20 something main protagonist Wade Watts (played by Tye Sharidan) declares, "After people gave up on trying to solve the world's problems and just focused on surviving them," it's not a pretty sight: Most people in Wade's home town of Columbus, Ohio of the future just live "in stacks" ... high rises reduced to _truly_ their bare essentials -- steel beam erector-set-like exteriors that look like giant "shelves" built for an enormous machine shop, with prefabricated (once) "mobile" homes just hoisted (presumably by crane), "stacked" and fitted into the high-rise-erector-set-shelving-space-like "floors." Talk about simply "warehousing people" ...
But .... (1) that's all that most people can afford with many / most of them finding themselves in incredible debt, mostly as a result of buying (in the real world) useless "stuff" to better-play their video games, and dreading the coming of debt collectors to their homes to take them away to "loyalty centers" (a truly inspired "Orwellian term" for 2045-era debtor prisons) where they'd be forced pay off their debts doing whatever menial jobs would make sense in an economy at least as large in the "virtual world" as in the real one.
And ... (2) if the real world looked increasingly ghastly, the Virtual World was becoming one whose limits were set only by one's imagination. For in the Virtual World, one could become anyone (or anything) one wanted to be. One could fly "a space ship" to a space casino (and, there's just a reference to it, an extraterrestrial brothel) the size of a planet. One could (virtually) climb "Mount Everest ... with ... Batman" if one desired ;-). One could join one's friends to fight armies of space-dragons and their orc / alien-like minions on planets called Doom. One could be "a pole dancer," without being thin, but dressed instead in sweats and smoking a cigarette while waiting for the laundry to get done :-). One could be "a world-class athlete in the Olympics" without working out...
While many of us, and certainly many more in our younger generation, already know a good deal of the beginnings of this virtual world, we're told that sometime in the 2020s a Bill Gates / Steve Jobs / Mark Zuckerberg-like Creator named James Donovan Halliday (played by Mark Rylance) along with a co-Creator and one-time, since sidelined (as appears often the case in stories like these), childhood (!) friend named Ogden Murrow (played by Simon Pegg) created "Gregarious Games" that brought all these disparate virtual realities into one grand universal Platform called "The Oasis." And it was such a hit that from then on most people just preferred living most of their waking lives there.
Well, James Donovan Halliday, eventually died. But upon his death, it was announced, _he_ announced, through a video testament that he left behind that the left an "Easter Egg" accessible by the one (or ones) who'd find "three keys" in this vast virtual universe that he had created to which he would leave Title to the whole Oasis that he created, and ... the Race to find said "Keys" and therefore the said "Easter Egg" was on ...
Among those "Gunters" ("Egg Hunters" in "nerd-short" ;-) was, of course, Wade Watts, along with "his crew" that he had never met except "in the Oasis" who were looking for the Egg (now 5 years on...) simply "for the love of the game" (and because it was SOOOO cooool" ;-).
But there was also an Evil magnate named Sorrento (played by Ben Mendelsohn at his swarmiest), whose company Innovative Online Industries, or IOI for short, had already made a fortune selling the various technologies that would "enhance" the experience in the Oasis -- hap-suits that would translate sensations induced remotely to one's body as if one were "really there" (like, as if one was punched in the arm by a friend, or given a bear hug...). Sorrento hired "an army" of Halliday geeks (people who knew EVERYTHING that there was to know about Halliday) as well as video-game players to get to that "Easter Egg" first.
So much then ensues ...
Now many Viewers will no doubt find themselves positively mesmerized or more negatively angrily "lost" in the film's virtual reality to appreciate the reflection on the Nature (and even the Value) of Reality. And there are certainly plenty of more generally "set in their ways" Viewers who will find the whole story of "The Oasis" disconcerting / frightening.
But positive aspects of the Virtual Reality world are also shown: One of the characters Art3mis / Samantha (played by Olivia Cooke) is shown to have have a rather large / unsightly birthmark in the real world, which she doesn't have to worry about in the Virtual One. And one of the funnier characters in the story is Sho (played by Philip Zhao) who, at age 11, is not taken seriously, yet, "in the real world" but in the Virtual one, he's _already_ a fun "bad-a" Ninja warrior to be reckoned with ;-).
I've also been amused by people in positions of power who resent and often fear the inherently decentralizing / democratizing tendencies of social media platforms. In The Social Network [2010] (the very first film I reviewed on my blog), Jesse Eisenberg, playing the Harvard-attending but never quite Harvard-milieu accepted Mark Zuckerberg, talked about Facebook allowing every person (with his / her "friends list") to become "their own gate-keeper of their own exclusive club." In the Virtual world, one's control over one's own world becomes even greater with one really becoming able to become truly anyone (or anything...) that one desires. And for folks who like "order" (or Order [TM]) and therefore like or have a need to keep other people in boxes (and those one doesn't like ... in prisons), the Virtual world can therefore be quite disconcerting (and even threatening). For what's a Führer without a people willing to be "Führered..."
Still, Reality is reality. And as much as one could empathize with the people of Wade's "stack-living" people of 2045 Columbus, OH, and understand why they would enjoy the Virtual Realtiy of the Oasis so much, we are reminded that there are Real Consequences in the Real World and our neglect of the Real World can and inevitably will intrude even into the Virtual World of our dreams.
So I just plain loved this movie.
I even made peace with my only question / complaint coming to see the film: Why was it being released on Easter weekend? Sure, by the week of the movie, it became clear that the movie was about "virtual Easter Eggs" (special gifts left by programmers in their video games for their fans). But I believe it was even more than that: In the world of the film (as in fact already in good part in ours), Halliday (or in ours Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg) was being treated as virtually a God, and EVERY UTTERANCE THAT HE / THEY SAID "STORED" / "REMEMBERED" AS IF IT WERE "SCRIPTURE."
I found this aspect of the story _fascinating_ and fascinatingly at least in part _true_. There are folks who consider Bill Gates, Steve Jobs / Mark Zuckerberg (or Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick and Stephen King...) as practically GODS and search for all kinds of hidden meaning in films like The Shining ;-).
I'm not threatened by the treatment of these people and all their works and all their utterances in this film, as none of these people are indeed God. Still, the need for people to latch onto these Giants (and often, generally _good_ / responsible ones...) of our time is indicative of our need for meaning, that perhaps _can't_ be found in the often dry / empty and at times even threatening world of Reality. There does seem to be a need in all of us to search for something that can Transcend it.
So overall, not only is this movie "a great ride," it's also a quite thought provoking one as well. Excellent job!
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